Oh, the Places You’ll Go! (Or Not.)

Some people are lucky enough to find their calling in college, progressing straight up the career ladder their whole working lives. For most of us, the career path looks more like a zigzag than a straight arrow, and finding work that feels like a good fit can be a lifelong journey.

Given that, we wondered which jobs people are most likely to leave in the course of their careers, and where they tend to go next. Is career-switching fairly common, or do we mostly jump around in one relatively finite area? Working with the data science team at LinkedIn, we have identified career progression for more than 300 job titles–finding the top three roles that workers transitioned to, with the total number who made the switch.